


Connection

by YvonneSilver



Category: Black Sails, Pacific Rim (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Pacific Rim Fusion, Drift Compatibility, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-25
Updated: 2018-11-25
Packaged: 2019-08-29 03:56:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,706
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16736652
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/YvonneSilver/pseuds/YvonneSilver
Summary: Billy was a Jaeger pilot once. He'd been good at it too, but he hadn't been inside a Jaeger since he lost his partner, Hal Gates, in a kaiju fight while they were still connected. But when brash newcomer Charles Vane dared him to a match-up fight, they appear to be compatible, and Billy had to enter the drift once more.





	Connection

**Author's Note:**

> Based on [an anonymous tumblr prompt](http://ayantiel.tumblr.com/post/156947959527)

Flint stopped Billy with a gentle hand on his shoulder just before he could follow Vane into the simulation training room. Billy looked up, noted the worried look on Flint’s face.

“Remember, don’t chase the rabbit. Just let the memories flow where they go, and move on. Don’t get lost in there.”

Billy gave him what he hoped was a confident grin. “I _have_ done this before, Captain.”

Flint didn’t even crack a smile. “Even veterans get lured in by the memories. Stay in the drift, the drift is silence.” He looked past Billy. “And if he pulls you under, let go. Don’t take any risks.” He clapped him on the shoulder, and headed back to the command center.

 

The new recruit looked good in the jaeger suit. The full black armor suited him. He looked up when Billy walked in.

“You mind if I pick the right side?” He said. “I dress right.”

Billy snorted, and tried to cover it up with a cough. “Fine. Good, yeah. Sure. I don’t care either way.”

Billy picked up his helmet, using it as an excuse not to look at Vane. Then, he clicked himself into the left pilot’s side. He took a couple of practice swings, got used to the way the harness moved again. It felt good. He wouldn’t deny it, it felt good to have that kind of power at his fingertips again. Exciting.

He looked over to his co-pilot. Vane did a couple of extra punches before turning to him.

“Ready?”

“Let’s do this.”

 

_Preparing Neural Handshake. Initiating Neural Handshake._  

Billy leant back, closed his eyes, and waited for the drift to open. There was a familiar sense of vertigo, the smell of fire, light flashing behind his eye-lids. He opened his eyes and saw a doorknob. He reached out with a child’s hand, knocked on the door, then ran. He knew, again, that if he was fast enough, he could sneak in through an open window at the back of the house, grab anything worth grabbing, and sneak back out before the baker was back from opening the door.

Great first impression I’m leaving, he thought, in that detached way his thoughts always floated over his memories in the drift. But he knew better than to try and hide anything. The drift went where it would go. His co-pilot would just have to deal with it.

He jumped down from the window, stolen baked goods in hand, and scampered off into a side-street. He hardly noticed when the memory switched. It could have been the same backstreet alley, and he was running down it in the exact same way, except he felt more of that sense of just being a passenger that came through second-hand memory. Had he and Vane grown up in the same slum? But the boy he was inhabiting now took an unexpected left turn and afforded him a view of a construction site he hadn’t known as himself.

“I can work,” he said in a voice not his own, “Please. Just a day. Half a day.”

“Sorry kid. No open spots for late comers.”

“Please,” he said again, the hunger eating away his pride.

“How old are you?” The foreman said suspiciously, and he took that as his cue to cut his losses. Better to go hungry than to deal with the orphanage again, he knew with someone else’s thoughts. He knew with his own thoughts. He hadn’t expected to find this much similarity in Vane.

He turned and ran, because that was what the boy in the memory had done, and then the next memory pushed him off his feet. 

 

He stood up in a body that felt more his own, and wiped blood away from his nose with the back of his hand. Even in the drift he couldn’t remember who he’d been fighting, only the dim outline of a figure retreating as he pulled himself back on his feet with a feeling of dim pride. The sound of someone slow-clapping behind him sharp in the empty alley.

He turned round, his fists raised, but the man walking toward him didn’t seem an immediate threat. The boy in the memory was apprehensive but Billy smiled inwardly at his first memory of Flint. The first words he spoke to him would never leave him.

“You’re quite the fighter, kid. Wanna put those skills to use?”

The memory shifted, the voice overlapping with another, speaking the exact same words, in a less friendly tone.

“We could use a kid like you. Capable. Smart.” He was indoors suddenly, and the man in front of him wasn’t Flint anymore. He was larger, with dark hair and a beard. The hunger was back in Vane’s memory, sharper, more immediate. He was going to say yes, knew this back then, Billy knew it now. He felt something tug at the drift.

_Just let it flow_. He thought, as loudly as he could.  _It’ll pass._  

He reached out, to shake the many-ringed hand that was offered him, because that was what had happened, and swimming against the drift wouldn’t change it. Charles didn’t fight it.

 

He looked up from the hand he was holding, and the face in front of him almost took his breath away. Hal. Hal Gates, flushed with post-training excitement, an excited glint in his eye. “You felt that, right?”

Billy could feel the grin on his face, but the elation he felt was detached, buried under the suddenly fresh ache. He knew he’d find Hal in the drift again. He thought he’d been prepared. He wasn’t prepared. “Drift compatible,” he said, because it’s what he had said.

The memory was more real than any of the drift had been so far. The smell of the gym’s sweat, the sound of the other trainees clapping, the look of pride on Hal’s face, the warmth of his handshake, it was all seared into his memory. Their first shared memory. He gripped him harder. Despite himself, despite all his training, he wanted to stay. He knew what other memories lay ahead. 

Billy took a deep breath. Stay in the drift. The drift is silence. “Let’s go kill some kaiju,” he said. Or he would have said, if the drift didn’t suddenly hit a rapid.

 

The bright light of the training hall fitzed out, night-time taking over all at once. He was an unfamiliar boy again, standing just on the edge of darkness beside a streetlamp, looking at an old, stately house. He shivered. He didn’t want to be here, he hadn’t wanted to be here. Something tugged at the drift again.

Billy looked down at his hands, he was holding a razor wire. He could feel the emptiness inside the boy he was, he could feel the desperation slowly morphing into resolve. He snapped the wire tight, turned his attention back towards the house.

The world fell sideways. He was running. There was voice in his head that was his own and not his own.  _I didn’t I didn’t I didn’t._  There was something sticky on his hands. His left hand still held one end of the razor wire. A mist was forming that had nothing to do with the memory.

We’re falling out of alignment, Billy realized. As soon as that thought crossed his mind, he dropped out of the memory. He watched the body he’d been in run away from him, an out-of-body experience from a body not his own. Charles couldn’t be more than seventeen in this memory.

Don’t take any risks, Flint had said. If he pulls you under, let him go.

Billy only hesitated a second. Then he ran after the quickly fading figure. “Charles!”

 

Charles was aging as he ran, his features settling into the face he’d had in the cockpit, but the terror in his eyes didn’t change.

“It’s not real!” Billy shouted, but Charles gave no sign of having heard him. They sprinted through an endless street in the night, past blurred apartments. It began to rain. The streetlights started to spread out further, their last pools of light becoming more and more sporadic. He’d have to do something fast.

Billy spurred himself on for a final sprint. He got right behind Charles, grabbed his hand, and  _turned_.

 

There was a loud screeching of tearing metal. Alarms blared. Lights flared. The whole world shook.

Billy knew immediately what memory he’d pulled them into. They were in a jaeger cockpit. The jaeger cockpit of the WALRUS.

He was in the memory again, the sights and sounds as immediate as if he were actually experiencing them, the jaeger controls in his hands, and Hal… Hal in his head.

“Hang in there son.” 

He didn’t look over, because he hadn’t. He never saw the moment when the jaeger’s cockpit had caved in, had only felt the connection tear away as if all his nerve ending had suddenly fired at once.

 

He blinked, and the cockpit was whole again. The cockpit was real. 

_Handshake terminated_.

He fell forward as the harness disengaged, caught himself on hands and knees. Immediately, he looked to his right, and saw Vane, in a similar position, breathing heavily, but conscious.

He heard the doors slide open, and soon someone was helping him to his feet. He recognized John, one of the newest recruits, who looked at him with a mix of worry and relief.

“What happened?” Billy asked, the words slurring as he figured out how to work his own brain again.

“I was about to ask you the same thing,” Flint asked as he walked in. “Your brainwaves were off the charts. I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone get that close to coma-territory and come back. I terminated the process as soon as you looked stable enough to do so.” He shot a glare over Billy’s shoulder. “What did he do?”

Billy looked behind him, where Vane was being helped up by two techs. Whose blood had he had on his hands? He turned back to Flint.

“You know what firsts drifts are like. He drifted. We’ll get the hang of it next time.”

Flint looked skeptical, but didn’t push it. “Fine. Go clean up. I’ll talk to you both after mess.”


End file.
